


Accidentally Hurt By Friend

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [7]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16897728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: “No hospitals,” Len had told him years ago, back when they were first figuring out their partnership. “If we can patch it up on our own, we do. Fake IDs will only get you so far in hospitals before they start asking about payment and insurance.”





	Accidentally Hurt By Friend

There was a scar they didn’t talk about, hidden under layers of sweaters and nonchalance. It was an ugly thing, burned and half-melted skin scarred over into something that made Mick’s chest go tight any time he saw it. He was supposed to be the one with burns. He could look at his own and, to him, they were badges of honor; signs that the fire touched him and he came out the other side.

But on _Len_?

It wasn’t supposed to happen.

It did anyway.

 

 

The safe house was horrible; cold and drafty and Mick didn’t care how much Len brushed him off and said the cold didn’t bother him. Len was going to get pneumonia if they hid out in the old warehouse much longer. His breathing was already getting funny and Mick thought he could see the flush growing on pale cheeks that just spoke of fevers.

“No hospitals,” Len had told him years ago, back when they were first figuring out their partnership. “If we can patch it up on our own, we do. Fake IDs will only get you so far in hospitals before they start asking about payment and insurance.”

He doubted Len would count pneumonia as hospital-worthy, but Mick was generally a fan of Len _breathing_. If it got worse, he’d throw him over his shoulder and take him in himself. In the meantime, the least he could do was try to keep them both warm.

He dragged an old iron drum inside, half-rusted, but sturdy enough to contain a fire. Old newspapers. Trash. Cold or not, everything was dry. It lit, flaring up into something beautiful that Mick just wanted to fall right into. He could stare at it for hours, watching the colors stretch and merge. The way the flames bent and curled like fingers beckoning him closer.

Closer.

Len.

He pulled Len towards the warmth with only a little effort, one hand absently rubbing at Len’s arm like he was trying to jumpstart the warming process.

Len shoved him off, a little more skittish about touch when he wasn’t feeling his best, but he moved closer to the fire on his own, bare hands reaching out to let the heat leech into his palms. Mick wondered if he’d be able to see the color coming back to Len’s skin if he tried hard enough or if it would just be the glow of the flame.

“Better?”

Len hummed softly. He hadn’t been especially chatty since they’d retreated to their sad excuse of a safe house, too busy thinking over their job and how it had gone sideways. Had they tripped one of the alarms? Had he screwed up when he was memorizing the guard’s schedules? Had someone come in early?

Mick would tell him it didn’t matter, that they’d still made it out with enough to get by for a bit and no one had seen them, but he knew Len well enough to know the guy wouldn’t listen. Let him obsess, he thought as he tossed an extra magazine – months old and pages curling – into the fire. Watched it flare, flames splitting for a moment as July’s issue of _Good Housekeeping_ cut through, right before it closed in and swallowed it up.

It was so beautiful. Powerful and hungry and Mick let himself fall into it as the world faded away at the edges. Him and the fire. The heat coming off and making sweat bead at his temples. Heat eating away at the cold like it was hungry for it, fighting a war the cold couldn’t win, and…

God, how did people hate it?

The power in the flame was ever-changing, colors and heat manipulated by what it was burning. He wanted to reach in farther, let the flames lick against his palms and scorch his skin; add to the scars that were beginning to litter his arms like tally marks for his truest communions with the fire. To bare himself and let the fire judge him.

“Mick.”

He blinked, slow the first time and harder the second. Len. Len was talking to him. He forced his gaze away partially so he could look at his partner instead. The flush was still on his cheeks, but the color beneath it looked closer to his usual coloring than to the almost-gray tone he’d had the last few days. “Yeah?”

“Stop adding to it. The fire’s big enough.”

Mick looked down at the crumpled newspaper in his fist and over to the fire crackling in the oil drum. “It’s not warm enough.”

“It is,” Len told him, but Len was only wearing a thin jacket, his true winter one handed off to Lisa when she’d grown out of hers and they couldn’t risk Lewis seeing something new come around. New meant money or opportunities to steal and Len had spent months trying to distance himself from his father’s jobs. “Let it die down a little before you add anything else.”

“You’re gonna get sick.”

“I’m fine,” Len insisted, but his breathing still sounded funny. Not pneumonia yet, but Mick was sure he had bronchitis at the very least. Len had barely slept for days with the way he’d been coughing.

“You’d say you were fine with a bullet in your leg.” He _had_ said he was fine with a bullet in his leg. Last year. Len seemed to know what he was thinking, too, because his nose wrinkled. “I know how to handle a fire better than you do.”

He reached out to toss the newspaper in – it wasn’t even _big_ , would barely make the fire grow at all – but Len reached out to grab his wrist, sliding between him and the drum. Between him and the fire.

He didn’t think. His other hand just went up and pushed Len away, to the side and Len…

He wasn’t sure. Maybe he tripped over his own feet or Mick had pushed him too far off balance.

It didn’t matter.

Len fell, twisting, and his shoulder hit the drum. Hot, rusted metal gave away as the metal and fire burned through the thin jacket and Len…

Len _screamed_.

 

 

(Len never forgave himself for the scar on Lisa’s shoulder.

Mick never forgave himself for the one on Len’s.)

The End


End file.
